F1 News: McLaren ‘privately frustrated‘ with Mercedes over power unit misery

McLaren

McLaren ‘privately frustrated‘ with Mercedes over F1 power unit misery

Not the cleanest start to the year for the papaya squad...

Chris Deeley

Sunday 9 August 2026 21:44

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Being a customer team in F1 can be great. You get an engine made by experts at the top of the field, and you don't have to foot the bill for the development process.

However, as McLaren are being reminded in 2026, there are some downsides which come with getting someone else to make the engines and then send you a couple in the post – not least that they know how the power unit works a lot better than you do.

The papaya team had some notable struggles with their brand new hybrid units early in the 2026 season, with both of their cars infamously failing to start the Chinese Grand Prix thanks to electrical faults on the power units, with BBC Sport's Andrew Benson revealing that they are 'struggling' with the engine even halfway through the year.

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The team has been outwardly conciliatory, patiently saying that they're getting to grips with the machinery (and putting a lot of time and effort into doing so, it was revealed recently), but Benson claimed on the Chequered Flag Extra podcast this week that there are 'private frustrations' with how forthcoming Mercedes are – or rather, aren't – being with helpful information.

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Benson: McLaren made initial mistakes in design

The power unit struggles aren't the only reason that McLaren have struggled to match the pace of the works Mercedes team, as the veteran journalist also pointed out, but it is the main external reason.

"McLaren are suffering, basically, for the end of last year," Benson said. "They put a bit more resource into the end of 2025 to make sure they got the championship over the line, in the context of the mistakes they were making, and that put them behind in terms of development.

"I think they've admitted that they made some mistakes with their aerodynamic philosophy choices with this year's car initially, which took them two or three races to work out, then they had to change tack a bit and that's where these upgrades that were introduced in Hungary have come from.

"They've overperformed, by the way. They were not expecting to win the Hungarian Grand Prix as a consequence of those upgrades."

McLaren 'struggling' with Mercedes engine

"Also, they've been struggling with the engine," he continued. "They've been being very polite in public, but privately there's definitely some frustrations at McLaren about the lack of information that's come to them from Mercedes in terms of the operation of the power unit.

"They're incredibly complicated, these new hybrid engines, with their close to 50/50 split between internal combustion and electrical power. All season we've been talking about deployment and energy starvation and stuff, and maximising that is really really difficult because of the complexities in the regulations."

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